New Media Old News

Clay Shirky compared watching TV to the Victorian equivalent of drinking gin. Mass media has been an opiate of the people that is wearing off as a new generation creates its own interactive media. He’s right. Text from DJ Cline.

Not long ago I covered a Teen Tech event. They get all their news online and I realized I have stop reading newspapers, listening to the radio and watching television if I want to be keep up. In many ways I won’t miss old media.

Quitting newspapers is like quitting smoking. Maybe the New York Times will sell a small pulpy patch I can slap over my eyelids in the morning. Papers still tempt me. They wait outside my hotel room like gray groupies. Vending machines everywhere. There is the onerous task of search for an interesting article. There is the guilt of killing the planet as you throw them away.

Listening to the radio isn’t going away for me. It’s free. I can listen to it in my car as I drive and not hit anything. I won’t pay for satellite radio. I’ll listen to my iPod instead.

The decision not to watch TV is has already been made for me. Next year analog TV stations will go dark. If I want, the government will pay for new converter box, but I think I’m done here. I’ve reached the limit of how many boxes and remotes I want to have in my living room.

The good news is that the new media is mobile. It will get me and the next generation off the couch and into the streets. No telling where that will lead.

Copyright 2008 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj in Blumbers, Commentary [729 Views]